"Would they? Well--perhaps--if I were only sewing it wouldn't interrupt me much." I said, "That is not very graciously put, Eliza. There is a certain art in reading aloud. Some have it, and some have not. I do not know if I have ever told you, but when I was a boy of twelve I won a prize for recitation, though several older boys were competing against me." She said that I had told her before several times. I continued: "And I suppose that I have developed since then. A man in our office once told me that he thought I should have done well on the stage. I don't know whether I ever mentioned it." She said that I had mentioned it once or twice. "I should have thought that you would have been glad of a little pleasure--innocent, profitable, and entertaining. However, if you think I am not capable of----" "What do you want to read?" "What would you like me to read?" "Miss Sakers lent me this." She handed me a paper-covered volume, entitled, "The Murglow Mystery; or, The Stain on the Staircase." "Trash like this is not literature," I said. However, to please her, I glanced at the first page. Half an hour later I said that I should be very sorry to read a book of that stamp out loud. "Then why do you go on reading it to yourself?" "Strictly speaking, I am not reading it. I am glancing at it." When Eliza got up to go to bed, an hour afterward, she asked me if I was still glancing. I kept my temper. "Try not to be so infernally unreasonable," I said. "If Miss Sakers lends us a book, it is discourteous not to look at it." On the following night Eliza said that she hoped I was not going to sit up until three in the morning, wasting the gas and ruining my health, over a book that I myself had said-- "And who pays for the gas?" "Nobody's paid last quarter's yet. Mother can't do everything, and----" "Well, we can talk about that some other time. To-night I am going to read aloud to you a play of Shakespeare's. I wonder if you even know who Shakespeare was?" "Of course I do." "Could you honestly say that you have ever read one--only one--of his tragedies?" "No. Could you?" "I am going to read 'Macbeth' to you, trying to indicate by changes in my voice which character is speaking." I opened the book. Eliza said that she couldn't think who it was took her scissors. "I can't begin till you keep quiet," I said. "It's the second pair that's gone this week." "Very well, then," I said, shutting up the book with a bang, "I will not read aloud to you to-night at all. You may get along as you can without it." "You're sure you didn't take those scissors for anything?" she replied, meditatively. * * * * * "Now then," I said, on the next night, "I am ready to begin. The tragedy is entitled 'Macbeth.' This is the first scene." "What is the first scene?" "A blasted heath." "Well, I think you might give a civil answer to a civil question. There was no occasion to use that word." "I didn't."